A pedestrian walking down a busy commercial strip of a New Orleans suburb gunned down a sheriff’s deputy. According to officials, the deputy tried to stop the pedestrian after which, he opened fire on the deputy.
A suspect has been arrested.
The 51-year-old deputy, David F Michel Jr was pronounced dead after being rushed to University Medical Center in New Orleans. Police and sheriff’s vehicles with sirens blaring streamed into the hospital’s parking lot.
Col John Fortunato, a Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s spokesman, announced Michel’s death as police flooded a nearby neighborhood, searching for the suspect by helicopter and combing the area with dogs.
The suspect is at University Medical Center in New Orleans, being treated for minor injuries. The suspect is believed to have been hurt in a struggle with Michel prior to the shooting.
Fortunato described Michel as a member of a street crimes unit.
The shooter fled after shooting the officer several times. The normal operational tour of duty for guys who work in street crimes is to drive around certain neighborhoods that we know are high-crime areas and make pedestrian stops, and make vehicle stops as well.Col John Fortunato, Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Spokesman
He further said that Sheriff Newell Normand was out of town but planned an immediate return and scheduled a 10 pm news conference on the shooting.
The shooting happened on Manhattan Boulevard near its intersection with Lapalco Boulevard, both heavily traveled thoroughfares in the area known as the West Bank, across the Mississippi River from New Orleans.
It was the year’s second shooting of a Jefferson officer.
Another member of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office was shot and wounded in January during a drug raid on a house in the Lower 9th Ward section of New Orleans.
(with agency inputs)
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